Fantasy Vs Real Life
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: When Oliver Queen was younger, he had a very firm image of what his future would contain. Life, as it happens, has other plans. Oliver/Felicity.


When Oliver was seventeen years old, he imagined his future wife to be, no other way to phrase it, hot as hell.

He thought he'd marry a supermodel. He imagined turning up to his father's business galas with a brunette with mysterious eyes, the kind of beautiful that makes every man in the room stop in their tracks. He imagined a big white wedding, no expense spared, with her wearing a dress that cost tens of thousands of dollars. He imagined the Plaza in June, his mother talking her way into every part of the wedding that would be the biggest event the Queens had ever hosted.

Oliver imagined that his wife would be the perfect partner; a woman in the stress and a demon in the sheets. He imagined weekends where entire days were spent in bed with bare skin, bare inhibitions and sex. So much sex. Sex all the time. His wife would be the gorgeous and slim even when she bore his children, with one of those perfect, tight bumps that you saw celebrities sporting even in the later months of pregnancy.

Oliver's children would be well behaved, gorgeous, and smart. They'd get into the best schools in the country and excel their school work. He imagined perfect children, perfect wife, perfect home, perfect everything. Because he was Oliver Jonas Queen, and there was nothing suitable except perfection.

When Oliver Queen is thirty-two years old, he marries Felicity Smoak. Life is nothing like he imagines it.

They've been together for two years when he finally sees his wife-to-be walk up the aisle towards him and become Mrs. Queen. They don't have a big wedding; far from it, in fact. After months of clashing on the ideas of what each would constitute a perfect wedding, they end up flying their closest friends and family to Las Vegas and marrying at midday on a Wednesday afternoon. His best friend and former bodyguard is his best man, and Felicity's given away by her mother, instead of her absentee father.

Married life with Felicity is vastly different than he imagined. There's a lot of sex, but it's not throwing-against-the-wall, quickie-in-the-kitchen like he imagined. Well, it was once, but they knocked three picture frames off the wall and were almost caught by Thea in the kitchen. Sex with Felicity is passionate in ways that Oliver never imagined. It's clumsy, it's comfortable, it's fun. Most nights they end up laughing as much as moaning as they fall into bed together.

Instead of the satin nightgowns he imagined in his youth, Oliver admires Felicity most when she's wandering through the bedroom half-awake in her cartoon print pyjamas. Sure, there's a very particular silk set she brings out on special occasions, but there's something very special about realising he was making eye contact with a cartoon cat while admiring his wife's backside one morning. When they wake up, they bicker over morning breath and who's going to make the coffee - a battle he always loses.

Oliver loves his wife. He loves her through the way she snores when she gets a cold and her nose is blocked. He loves her because she wears a ridiculous Christmas sweater even though she's Jewish, and she loves him when he screws up by lighting an entire menorah in one sitting. He loves her when she freaks out and accidentally beats up a security guard with her purse thinking that they're paparazzi. He loves her through and beyond the awful food poisoning episode of 2018 where they spent forty-eight hours cohabiting the bathroom floor and learning a side of each other they never imagined they'd share. He loves it most when she rambles and goes on her adorable rants because now she's his wife and he can just kiss those fluttering lips until she's quiet.

Just as he imagined, though, his wife is gorgeous when she's pregnant. Felicity blossoms, not with slim thighs and a tight bump, but with delicious curves that make him crave her all the more. There's a lot of puking, a lot of new body reactions, a lot of new things in general, but then there's a new little baby and it's all theirs. And he's not perfect, because Tommy's born seven weeks early and needs a lot of extra help before he can go home, but overall their little boy is perfection.

Things get harder after that. Oliver never imagined he'd spend their son's second year of life dealing with fertility issues. Oliver never imagined in his life that they'd spend a night in tears because as much as they love their son they wanted a bigger family they're told they can't have. His wife blames herself in a destructive way he knew she used to fight him out of, but he's stuck in the same rut and it takes them a long time to accept that their family of three is as big as it'll get.

Ava's a blessing. A miracle. Even the doctors can't explain it, but they don't argue. They have a little girl when Tommy turns five years old, and their bed becomes a little fuller on Saturday mornings, and after a few years their son has to share control of the remote.

His children struggle in school. It's just a simple fact. Tommy's dyslexic, and they pour over parenting blogs and support information which leads to a family interest in homework which all pays off when Tommy takes second place in the school spelling bee when he's twelve years old. Ava's mind wanders, and she finds it hard to focus on school, ever the daydreamer. She's good with computers and a fantastic artist though, and they find her focus to easily switch when they let her play to her strengths around the curriculum. Despite the struggle, Oliver's present and applauding on his feet when his children graduate high school and college with honours.

His son takes over the family business as one of the best salesmen and negotiators the company's ever seen, when Oliver retires. Despite the frantic concern, he ends up taking over both sides of the family business, and the site of her son in the hood is one that Felicity never gets used to. His daughter takes over the applied sciences department that Felicity built from the ground up and eventually, Oliver's watching his children give united press conferences as the joint CEO's of Queen Incorporated and-

"How is this my life?" Oliver wonders when his daughter's dancing on her wedding day, and his wife's hand slips into his. She smiles at him, squeezing his hand.

"Because it is," she summaries simply, and with wrinkles around her eyes and grey hairs amid the blonde, she's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.

When he was seventeen years old, Oliver Queen dreams of the perfect wife, of a perfect home with his perfect family.

Real life delivers far better than he ever imagined.


End file.
